by Vision »
02 Oct 2019 10:13
retro royal Terrible first half performance, still no shape, change in formation no doubt doesn't help, maybe Moore needs a rest, Gomes needs to stop pulling the youngest players off because he doesn't have the guts to pull a senior player off. We have no width in this squad.
Thought Boye looked better in the middle and would like to see Ejaria on the left be interesting to see if Olise gets a chance on Saturday, very much doubt it, expecting Gomes to put Adam in
Hate to say it Gomes has had almost 30 games now, results really haven't improved, what worries me most is the lack of formation and positioning, players don't seem to know what each other are doing.
Barrett should have been pulled off the moment Swift was sent off. Not his fault but it was never going to be his sort of game once we were down to ten.
The main issue for me though is how poorly we adapt to game situations. I hate to harp on about the past but Coppell would more often that not credit his players with the intelligence to sort things out for themselves on the pitch . The game here wasn't lost because of the sending off as such, (although playing 10 men for 70 minutes against Fulham isn't the most ideal situation), but because we didn't react to it on the field.
Surely the instant reaction to losing a man is to go ultra defensive for a bit until you can find the right shape. We just seemed to carry on as before ignoring the fact that Swift was no longer there. Maybe this is down to Gomes micromanaging so much that players aren't capable of thinking for themselves but surely it doesn't take much thought to just fall back into two banks of 4 until we can make adjustments.
I'll go against the grain here and say that "effort" really isn't the issue and the players did put in a shift particularly Ejaria and Rino in the middle of midfield although for the most part the former seems to be taking a battering on here . I also don't think we started that badly either, a very good chance early on which might have changed things. Again though once things started going pear shaped we didn't seem able to adjust to it. Add in the fact that individually all the back 4 had their worst games of the season at the same time then its a recipe for disaster.
Gomes of course takes ultimate responsibility for this and he's going to be under pressure rightly but is now really the time to sack yet another manager? I have the same feeling I had now as when the Yongge's took over. When Stam arrived all the talk was of us being Academy focused but as soon as there was a sniff of the Premier League Money Machine out came the chequebook and in came big money (for us) signings. This didn't end with the disappointment of the approach failing. Clement was given a relative fortune to spend on players over half of whom were up for sale barely 4 months later. Astonishingly too despite obstacles being put in their way , the owners still eventually found a way to spend unheard of sums once again this summer. The narrative has been that Stam, Clement and mainly Gourlay were all the villains in our decline but here we sit with Gourlay long gone , "our club back" ha! and exactly the same feeling we've had the past two season only with added financial commitments. Anyone who thought Howe was going to automatically be a more prudent, calming financial steward obviously wasn't around or conveniently forgot when Madejski was on his Malaysian tax dodge and Howe was sanctioning insane transfer fees for 3rd tier crap under Burns.
For those that want Gomes gone, it won't take much longer. It's clear these owners are intent on Premiership Football as soon as they can get it and will pull the trigger if they don't think the manager can deliver it. Ambition is a good thing in general and I'm not for one minute suggesting they're fly by night merchants (the Bearwood Development would indicate not) but we've pretty much found ourselves in the same situation at this stage of every season they've been at the helm.
At some stage you've got to question their methodology. Gomes has flaws and was a baffling appointment at the time but despite that there are positive things and sparks that I see that I haven't seen for a while. However when a manager confidently states that he prefers to work with a smaller group of younger players then within a matter of months he's working with an even more bloated squad than the one he inherited you have to wonder whether we really have any plan at all.
Apologies for the slightly off topic ramble